Wharton Professor Yoram “Jerry” Wind calls himself a liberal Republican. Unhappy with what he considers far-right positions taken by his party, he searched for a way to change the GOP. Unsolicited, in July of 2000, Wind donated $250 to an Alexandria, Virginia-based political action committee: Republicans for Choice. Over the next nine years, he and his wife sent 10 more contributions to the same PAC, totaling $4,000. Like many of the more than 300 donors to the PAC since 2006, Wind expected that his contributions were going to help elect Republican candidates who support abortion rights—and “to fight against those who want to legislate against abortion.”

Since the formation of the PAC in 1990, documents show that Republicans for Choice has raised and spent more than $5.5 million. But a Center for Public Integrity analysis of the PAC’s more recent filings—along with data from CQ MoneyLine, which tracks political giving—reveals that over the past decade less than five percent of the committee’s spending has gone to political candidates, other political committees, or independent expenditures. And since 2005, just about one-half of one percent of the PAC’s nearly $1 million in spending has gone to federal or state campaigns, according to a review of records. By comparison, Federal Election Commission data show the average federal PAC in the recent 2007-2008 cycle dedicated about 35 percent of spending to support federal candidates. A comparison to other PACs on both sides of the abortion debate shows that groups similar to Republicans for Choice devote a much greater portion of their funds on candidates and campaigns.

So where did RFC’s money go? Mostly to what might be loosely defined as overhead. Much of the group’s spending has gone to the coffers of consulting companies owned by the PAC’s chair, Ann E. W. Stone. Those firms -along with payments to reimburse Stone’s expenses for travel, entertainment, and automobile repairs—account for more than two-thirds of RFC’s PAC expenditures since 2006. Hundreds of dollars more went to pay for Stone’s parking tickets.

Since post-Watergate campaign finance laws limiting individual contributions went into effect in the mid-1970s, more and more interest groups have created PACs. These committees allow individual contributors to band together, magnifying their impact and getting candidates elected who share their viewpoints. According to the FEC, the number of registered PACs grew from 608 in 1974 to more than 5,200 during the 2007-08 election cycle. In the last election, these thousands of PACs combined to distribute more than $412 million to federal candidates. But there are few rules and no accepted norms for PAC spending. As Paul S. Ryan, program director and legal counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, notes, donating to PACs is a “contributor beware” proposition.

Republicans for Choice is hardly the only PAC about which spending questions have been raised. But its failure to bankroll moderate Republicans for high office is symptomatic of the party’s move to the right on many issues. With the recent withdrawal of pro-abortion-rights Republican congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava, who was abandoned by the national party in favor of an anti-abortion independent, it seems there is little support—financial or otherwise—for pro-choice Republicans.

Inspired by Lee Atwater

Stone, 57, is the founder, chairman, treasurer, and sole registered officer of Republicans for Choice. A veteran GOP political operative, she was a protégé of conservative direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and, in 1991, an unsuccessful mayoral candidate in Alexandria, Virginia. She is also the ex-wife of prominent Republican strategist Roger Stone, who was known for controversial hardball tactics. She has often attributed the idea for her organization to the late Republican national chairman Lee Atwater.

Ann Stone created Republicans for Choice PAC in 1990. Tax-exempt political action committees such as RFC are authorized by statute to distribute funds to influence “the selection, nomination, election, or appointment” of political candidates. The committee lists three major goals on its website: locating and mobilizing a “pro-choice” majority within the GOP, fighting to remove anti-abortion language from the party’s platform, and raising money to elect pro-abortion-rights Republican candidates to state and federal office.

In the early ’90s, some pro-abortion-rights Republicans expressed skepticism about the true intentions of Stone and RFC. Nevertheless, Stone became the national face of abortion-rights Republicans. Every four years, during the Republican convention, Stone hits the airwaves to make the case for her party to support abortion rights. When asked about the organization’s achievements, she cites a long list: assembling a hefty directory of abortion-rights Republican donors and activists, achieving near-wins in platform language fights, defeating a proposal to withhold party funding from candidates who opposed a late-term abortion ban, organizing a 100-sailboat parade during the 1996 Republican convention, and recruiting promising candidates. Aided by that publicity, her PAC has raised big sums of money over the years: $850,000 combined over the 1992 and 1994 cycles, about $1 million in the 1996 cycle, and nearly $1.5 million in the 1998 cycle. Since the 2000 cycle began, RFC has raised about $2.9 million, including more than $350,000 in the 2008 cycle. FEC numbers show the average PAC’s per-cycle haul was roughly $82,000 in 1992, $110,000 in 1998, and $230,000 in 2008, putting RFC well above the median for PAC fundraising.

Following the Money

As RFC raised more funds in those early years, it began spending money, too - but it didn’t give much to candidates. In fact, unlike many similar committees, the amount of cash going to federal candidates—the bread and butter of most PACs—has never approached the 10 percent mark. When the question of the group’s spending was raised in a 1992 Legal Times article, Stone wrote a rebuttal. The first goal of the group, she said, was “not the election of federal candidates, but the election of pro-choice delegates” to the Republican National Convention. Including state campaigns, she added, 10.6 percent of total spending at that point had gone to “direct assistance to candidates,” putting the PAC in line with other major abortion rights political action committees. But in recent years, the group’s expenditures have not tracked with other major PACs on either side of the abortion debate. Since 1997, RFC has allocated less than 5 percent of its overall spending on federal candidates, political committees, and independent expenditures. Similar groups, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, have spent far more:

According to Stone, the fact that RFC is organized only as a political action committee (with no affiliated nonprofit organization to handle administrative duties) “distorts the percentages of how our money is spent under our reporting. … Most other groups segregate out their PAC activity” into other affiliated organizations, while RFC does everything under the PAC’s banner. That would mean a larger percentage of RFC funds go to overhead than is the case for groups that can pay administrative costs from other accounts.

Joseph Birkenstock, a former chief counsel to the Democratic National Committee and an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale, told the Center that political action committees often have high overhead for their first few years and that there is no set “best practice.” But, after more than 18 years of operation, "anything of this scale—[more than] two-thirds of receipts going to overhead—certainly strikes me as a pretty large percentage.”

Allison Hayward, an assistant professor at George Mason University’s School of Law and former chief of staff and counsel to a Republican commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, echoes these concerns. While noting that some PACs do spend money mostly on issues, instead of contributions to candidates, in this case—with most of RFC’s money going to its sole officer—“the PAC seems to be an extension of Ann Stone,” she told the Center.

Over time, the percentage of RFC spending devoted to campaign activity actually dropped from low to even lower. Since the 2004 cycle, when the committee’s contributions to state and federal candidates and committees totaled a mere $44,780 out of $539,504 spent in that period (8.3 %), political giving dropped precipitously. Just $5,420 of $967,108 spent since the beginning of 2005 has gone to federal or state candidates or committees—less than one percent.

Among the three major goals listed on the group’s website is raising money to “support and elect more abortion-rights Republican candidates at the state and federal levels.” A 2006 article still on the site, “Look Past the Party Label,” highlights seven allies Stone feared might be defeated in that year’s Congressional elections. These incumbents, she warned, “all have tough races.” As PACs may contribute up to $10,000 per candidate per cycle between the primary and general elections, RFC could have given these candidates a major financial boost. It had the money; the PAC ended the 2006 cycle with nearly $760,000 cash on hand. Still, Republicans For Choice made contributions to just two of the seven – and then for just $1,000 each. Stones’s fears proved well-founded; five were defeated in the November elections that year. Without them, proposed abortion restrictions were added to the House health care reform bill last month without a single Republican dissenting.

Stone defends her organization’s spending, arguing that “a big part of the aid we give candidates is not money.” But while some support for political candidates that would not show up on the disclosure forms is possible, no “independent expenditures” are listed in RFC’s filings this decade.

“A group might say a lot of things are not included in those numbers,” campaign finance expert Birkenstock noted. “But if a PAC incurs expenses explicitly to help a federal candidate, it would need to be listed in the group's FEC filings.”

“The worst money-making scheme ever”?

In recent years, most of the PAC’s payments have gone to one of three recipients: Capstone Lists (a direct-marketing company owned by Stone), The Stone Group (a political consulting firm owned by Stone), and Ann Stone directly. Since the beginning of 2005, about 69 percent of the $967,108 spent by the group has gone to those three entities. Both companies and the PAC, along with the not-yet-built National Women’s History Museum (Stone is senior vice president), share space in an Alexandria office building. Though the four entities list different suite numbers on correspondence, filings, and the building’s occupant directory, the four Stone groups share a second-floor office with a door marked “250-260.”

Republicans for Choice pays thousands of dollars each year for office, equipment, and list rental to Capstone Lists. The Stone Group’s services are retained for the PAC’s accounting, mailing production, and website updates (though republicansforchoice.com contains numerous out-of-date and under construction pages). Stone herself received nearly $250,000 since the start of 2001 as reimbursements for her “travel and entertainment,” “automobile maintenance repairs,” phone, tires, gasoline, and various other expenses.

In her response to the Center and in her 1992 rebuttal to Legal Times, Stone defended the arrangement, saying her firms are the best in the business. She said that while she takes no salary she must, under campaign finance rules, be reimbursed for all PAC-related personal expenses, and that PACs are legally required to pay her companies the prevailing market rates for services provided. She also expressed surprise that the percentage going to her companies was not even higher. “We outsourced the administrative processes to Capstone,” which also handles finances and filings, and “The Stone Group does all the mailings, graphics, messaging, and advertising, as well as project coordination,” she said. This arrangement, according to Stone, saves the PAC money.

In fact, Stone says her companies have lost more business due to her controversial views on abortion rights within the GOP than they have gained from Republicans For Choice. To those who suggest the PAC is just a money-making scheme by Stone, she says, it would have to be “the worst money-making scheme ever.”

Among other expenditures by the RFC were 13 payments over the 2006 and 2008 cycles to the Washington, D.C., government and one to the City of Alexandria to cover $685 worth of parking tickets. This figure represents more than 10 percent of the total given by the committee to political candidates over the same period. Stone does not dispute these payments, and in fact boasts that the PAC is transparent about them. “I could have put these on an expense report to ‘hide’ it,” she said. “I did not.”

Stone told the Center that, while she makes the final decisions, she relies on an advisory board and her PAC’s donors to set the agenda on PAC spending. At their suggestion, she said, she has emphasized state battles, such the 2008 South Dakota abortion ban ballot initiative. But a number of longtime donors contacted by the Center said they have never been asked for any input from the organization; only for money.

Wind, the Wharton professor, told the Center he is surprised by how Republicans for Choice has spent its money—his money—over the years. “If that's the correct number, it's quite shocking.” The longtime contributor said he still believes in the cause behind the PAC, but that there are problems that need to be addressed. “Those who run it,” he said, “are not running it very effectively, should be accountable for the money they get, and use it for the purpose people give the money.”

Josh Israel and Aaron Mehta are staff writers at the Center for Public Integrity. Caitlin Ginley and Laura Cheek also contributed to this report.